[Congressional Record Volume 167, Number 57 (Friday, March 26, 2021)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E307]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                INTRODUCTION OF THE FAIR PAY ACT OF 2021

                                 ______
                                 

                       HON. ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON

                      of the district of columbia

                    in the house of representatives

                         Friday, March 26, 2021

  Ms. NORTON. Madam Speaker, March 24th was Equal Pay Day, which marked 
the number of additional days a woman must work to earn what a man 
earned the prior year. The 1963 Equal Pay Act (EPA), the first of the 
great civil rights statutes of the 1960s, has grown creaky with age and 
needs updating to reflect the new workforce, in which women work almost 
as much as men.
  What maybe the best case for a stronger and updated EPA occurred in 
the Congress in 2003, when female custodians in the House and Senate 
won an EPA case after showing that female workers were paid a dollar 
less per hour for doing the same or similar work as males. Had those 
women not been represented by their union, they would have had an 
almost impossible task in using the rules for bringing and sustaining 
an EPA class action lawsuit.
  My own experience as the first woman to chair the U.S. Equal 
Employment Opportunity Commission afforded me the opportunity to 
enforce the EPA. However, if women are to get equal pay, they need the 
Fair Pay Act (FPA). I again introduce this bill on behalf of the 
average female worker, who is often first steered to, and then locked 
into, jobs with wages that are deeply influenced by the gender of 
individuals who have traditionally held such jobs. Much of the wage 
inequality women experience today is because of employer-steering and 
deeply rooted wage stereotypes, which result in wages paid according to 
gender and not according to the skill necessary to do the job. I 
introduce the FPA because the pay disparity most women face today stems 
mainly from the segregation of women and men in different jobs and 
paying women in female-dominated jobs systematically less. Two-thirds 
of white women and three quarters of African-American women work in 
just three areas: sales/clerical, service and factories. We need more 
aggressive strategies to break through the societal barriers present 
throughout history the world over, as well as employer-steering based 
on gender, which is as old as paid employment itself.
  The FPA would require that if men and women are doing comparable 
work, they must be paid comparable wages. If a woman, for example, is 
an emergency services operator, a female-dominated profession, she 
should not be paid less than a fire dispatcher, a male-dominated 
profession, simply because each of these jobs has been dominated by one 
gender. If a woman is a social worker, a traditionally female 
occupation, she should not earn less than a probation officer, a 
traditionally male job, simply because of the gender associated with 
each of these jobs.
  The FPA would not tamper with the legal burden. Under the FPA, as 
under the EPA, the burden would be on the plaintiff to prove 
discrimination. The plaintiff must show that the reason for the 
disparate treatment is gender discrimination, not legitimate market 
factors.
  Remedies to achieve comparable pay for men and women are not radical 
or unprecedented. State governments, in red and blue states alike, have 
shown that it is possible to eliminate the part of the pay gap that is 
due to discrimination. Twenty state governments have adjusted wages for 
female-dominated professions, raising pay for teachers, nurses, 
clerical workers, librarians, and other female-dominated jobs that paid 
less than comparable male-dominated jobs. Minnesota, for example, 
implemented a pay equity plan when it found that traditionally female 
jobs paid 20 percent less than comparable traditionally male jobs. 
There may well be some portion of the gender wage gap that is traceable 
to market factors, but 20 states have shown that you can tackle the 
gender discrimination-based wage gap without interfering in the market 
system. States generally have closed the wage gap over a period of four 
to five years at a one-time cost of no more than three to four percent 
of payroll.
  In addition, many female workers routinely achieve pay equity through 
collective bargaining, and countless employers provide it on their own 
as they see women shifting out of vital female-dominated occupations as 
a result of the shortage of skilled workers, as well as because of the 
unfairness to women. Unequal pay has been built into the way women have 
been treated since Adam and Eve. To dislodge such deep-seated and 
pervasive treatment, we must go to the source, the traditionally female 
occupations, where pay is linked with gender and always has been.
  I urge my colleagues to support this bill.

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